Posted
by
timothyon Sunday August 29, 2010 @09:33AM
from the explosive-extraction dept.

eldavojohn writes "Details are limited but state media is reporting on $75 million being put into a new research facility
in Qingdao, Shandong Province that will conduct research into mining the sea floor. From the article: 'Scientists believe sea beds at a depth of 4,000 to 6,000 meters hold abundant deposits of rare metals and methane hydrate, a solidified form of natural gas bound into ice that can serve as a new energy source.' The research center's first goal is to do surveying and exploration with a new submersible named 'Jiaolong' (a mythical aquatic Chinese dragon). Hopefully these quests yield energy resources to meet growing demand for resources like liquefied coal in China."

Did any of us honestly expect anything less than this from the next garbage release of windows from Microsoft? As if Vista wasn't a piss poor enough example of how they've completely sold out to the RIAA, MPAA and could give a shit less about the end user experience / integrity of the operating system as a whole. I'm surprised they haven't built in and made public a software back door for your local government agency to spy on all desktop behavior.

Only morons buy / trust / rely on / bother with new Microsoft operating systems. I have been spending, an incredible amount of time teaching my family and friends how to use Linux, and making them aware of how effective and efficient open source software truly is.

People still 'pay money' to take it in the ass from Redmond? You've got to be kidding me...

If you want this kind of absolute fucktarded nonsense to end...stop wasting your money with these twats.

Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday February 08, 2009 @09:22AM
from the no-phone-home dept.

Linker3000 writes "According to The Register, OpenDNS plans to introduce an new service that will prevent PCs infected with the Conficker (aka Downadup) malware from contacting its control servers, and will also make it easy for admins to know if even a single machine under their control has been infected by Conficker: 'Starting Monday, any networks with PCs that try to connect to the Conficker addresses will be flagged on an admin's private statistics page. The service is available for free to both businesses and home users.' With the amount of trouble this worm has caused, perhaps this is a good time to take a look at OpenDNS if you haven't done so already."

- I never use automatic updates from microsoft for any microsoft product

- People should not blindly trust anyone / remote corporation to automatically update software on their machine, especially one that has blatantly shown the world that they are only interested in maintaining their monopoly and the interests of their corporate interests, instead of the end users...such as microsoft.

- People should not trust microsoft ever again, and should not have to begin with.

- I constantly advocate that people not use automatic update ever for anything.

- That stupid people get what they deserve for being too lazy and stupid to think and do things themselves.

I would like to say this should be the last nail in the coffin, but this has happened before many times, and caught many times, and brought to the forefront many times...yet people still use automatic updates. The problem isn't microsoft being evil...we've all known that. The real problem here is blatant stupidity on the part of the end user for even allowing this kind of access to the machine remotely.

Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday January 27, 2009 @08:28PM
from the fly-by-wire-only-there-is-no-wire dept.

coondoggie writes with a NetworkWorld piece that begins, "Researchers at Purdue will soon experiment with an unmanned aircraft that pretty much flies itself with little human intervention. The aircraft will use a combination of global-positioning system technology and a guidance system called AttoPilot ... to guide the aerial vehicle to predetermined points. Researchers can be stationed off-site to monitor the aircraft and control its movements remotely. AttoPilot was installed in the aircraft early this year, and testing will begin in the spring, researchers said."

iminplaya sends along a New Scientist article that begins: "One of the driest deserts in the world, the Saharan Tenere Desert, hosted at least two flourishing lakeside populations during the Stone Age, a discovery of the largest graveyard from the era reveals. The archaeological site in Niger [is] called Gobero... It had been used as a burial site by two very different populations during the millennia when the Sahara was lush... 'The first people who used the Gobero cemetery were Kiffian, hunter-gatherers who grew up to two meters tall,' says Elena Garcea of the University of Cassino in Italy and one of the scientists on the team. The large stature of the Kiffian suggests that food was plentiful during their time in Gobero, 10,000 to 8,000 years ago... All traces of the Kiffian vanish abruptly around 8,000 years ago, when the Sahara became very dry for a thousand years. When the rains returned, a different population, the Tenerians, who were of a shorter and more gracile build, based themselves at this site... 'The most amazing find so far is a grave with a female and two children hugging each other. They were carefully arranged in this position. This strongly indicated they had spiritual beliefs and cared for their dead,' says Garcea." The research article is at PLoS One.

Posted
by
kdawsonon Tuesday July 01, 2008 @04:58AM
from the music-wants-to-be-free dept.

Chip Zoller writes "This community took note when the International Music Score Library Project shut down last October, and when Project Gutenberg stepped in to help three days later. I would like to alert you all that our site, IMSLP, has re-opened to the public for good after a 10-month hiatus. All the news updates in the interim can be found linked to the main page. We take great pride in re-opening as it demonstrates our willpower to make the masterpieces of history free to the world; and moreover to make manifest that we will not be bullied by publishers sporting outrageous claims of copyright in a country where they clearly are expired."